Indian Australian doc faces suspension

An Indian Australian doctor who has been convicted of illegal abortion, is still continuing her medical practice.

An Indian Australian doctor who was convicted of illegal abortion is still continuing her medical practice. So the Australian medical board is launching an attempt to suspend her, ahead of disciplinary hearing next month.

This move follows revelations that Dr Suman Sood was still practising 13 years after the first complaints were made.

Sood, 56, was charged with manslaughter in November 2005 for allegedly failing to follow the procedures that make abortion legal in the state of New South Wales.

Meanwhile, the Australian healthcare complaints commission, which took four years to bring a charge against Sood, has admitted that it took too long to investigate the case against her.

"It took the commission 11 months to get Sood's medical files and more than a year to conduct a peer review. "It's nothing short of disgusting, what happened to me," said Christine, one of Sood's patients.

Sood is the first doctor in NSW to be tried over an abortion case, since 1971. She has been charged with giving a 20-year-old woman, who was about 23 weeks pregnant, an abortion drug at her clinic in Fairfeld, southwest of Sydney, in May 2002.